Stocks to hedge against various U.S. Economic crises

Love this page, just starting to check out the rest of the site. This goes through all sorts of various ways to hedge against economic disasters in the U.S.

For the most part, the short story is to get into international.

peak oil et al links

Here's a site that has a lot of links to good links and information for the survivalist approach. Some of its facts are off (e.g. that the U.S. imports 60% of its oil - the actual figure is 92% I believe), but it's a worthwhile bookmark if you're getting serious about preparing for a hard landing.

Bingo! Here's a keeper for your portfolio

Symbol: DKA, aka Wisdomtree International Energy. Write it down, then go out buy some. Sell some of your current holdings and buy this one (which is exactly what I'm going to do)

Why, you may ask? Lots of reasons:
- It's all about energy, baby. That's the sector to be in, in case you haven't been reading my blog lately. Now is the right time to dive in - don't wait even until next week.
- It's all outside of the U.S. This makes the investment dual as a hedge/bet against the fall of the dollar.
- WisdomTree's approach is all about the dividend. All tolled, this baby has over a 3% dividend yield (and a very reasonable 11 P/E, as well as P/B, P/S, etc.). This dividend stream is solid, i.e. coming from great companies with lots of cash flow.
- Speaking of which, all holdings are in safe companies, in safe countries.
- Did I mention the low expense ratio? Gotta love ETFs....

This thing "seeks to track... the WisdomTree International Energy Sector Index." What is that index, you may ask? Good question - I guess they got some professors together and came up with the approach based on dividends and such. They say it's the right way to do it - I'll have to take their word for it, but I've always loved dividend-paying stocks, so it's easier for me to believe.

I may have just met this ETF, but I love it! It's a great way to kill two birds with one stone - getting away from the dollar and into energy.

They only way for this thing to do poorly is if:
A. Price of oil falls, *and*
B. The dollar rises (against the major currencies)
There's no way both of these will happen, and if they do we'll be living the high life anyway. It's the perfect hedge!

Kuntsler's advice summarized

For those of you who don't follow Kunstler regularly, here's the one to read.

inspiration & hard &@^#$@! work

An interesting article that gives me a realistic little bit of hope about the next age. Especially the very end:

'...the director of the Soil Association, Patrick Holden, put it: "What I have found is that the prospect of developing a strategic plan to do everything we can to equip ourselves for a post-fossil fuels age is, strangely, an inspirational proposition."'

You may recall a past post many moons ago re: the different stages of PO awareness. This one makes me think of "acceptance."